Originally Posted by
Scott Germaise
Here's my tips and learnings from using Kreg stuff and from my past year or two getting into making stuff out of wood:
* Another thumbs up on the Kreg Jig. I'm a relative beginner, but have made some nice looking living room quality tables with this jig. Perhaps obviously, you have to plan to make sure the pocket holes themselves on on non-visible portions of the project. Alternatively, you can get wood plugs to plug in the pocket holes. When you glue them in, you'll need to use a flush trim saw to cut off the remaining hangover and then sand down. (Make sure you let the glue dry completely before cutting if you do this.) If they're just going to show on the bottom of places, then maybe you don't care and it's not worth the trouble to fill in the holes.
* The Kreg jig really is awesome. I would, however, suggest the following:
- Spend the money for the newer, best one. It looks easier / faster to clamp down on the wood. I love my older model, but this is one place where it could be better. They figured that out and fixed it. Though for me it's not worth upgrading, if buying new that's what I'd do.
- Practice first. Maybe obvious. But take some scrap wood parts and put them together. Make sure you're using the right screws. Kreg has charts for which screws to use, how to set the collar depth. It's trivially easy once you've done it successfully a couple of times. But initial set up can be iffy for anyone the first time with such new stuff. One thing that tripped me up at first is I was adjusting the depth based on measuring from the tip of the bit, not the stop collar. (Stupid? Yes. Did it say to do it the right way in the instructions? Sure. Did I understand what I was doing? Not yet. But I figured it out after puzzling over why a piece of scrap wasn't working; not on my beautiful / more expensive oak.)
- Adjust the tool to the real size of wood, not the alleged nominal size. Some guys have fancy shop gear including planers. The rest of us have to make due with off the rack wood and be careful. The measurements are often off. Unless you're using S4S boards, which are ideally much better. And plywood is usually fairly accurate to it's stated size and width. But you still should check.
- Even after getting the pocket holes right, don't overfill the screws in. I typically used a corded drill to do the holes so as not to run out of battery, but it's a powerful drill. So I'd use my cordless with torque setting for putting in the screws so it'll slip once a screw is in reasonably well. Otherwise, you can go too far and push the screw past the countersink portion within the pocket hole. That is, it should be tight, and have pulled in the board your'e attaching, but you don't want to overdo it. (Again, this is something I tested on scrap first. I intentionally pushed through to failure just to see where the limits were.)
- I've seen folks just use pocket holes alone. Once I've dry fitted stuff, I add glue anyway. Why not? Just the usual care to not get too much squeeze out and to clean up later. The recommendation for that is to wait a few minutes until glue is not 'smeary' but is a bit pliable. Then you can peel it off or take it off easily with a knife, before it hardens and becomes a problem. I'm a bit nuts about this and have a black light in a utility fixture, which helps any glue show up. You want it off of there if you're going to stain, because any leftover glue is going to mess up staining. If you try to clean it up while it's still smeary, it can sink in a bit and then there's no easy way to sand it out. (Some guys say that's bs and if you use a damp rag quickly, it's not a problem. To each his own.) For gluing, I've gotten one of those little roller bottle things. Doing it straight from the glue bottle and with a fingertip seems to leave too much on for me. (And yes, again... I know the pros can get this right by feel. I can't yet.)
* Wood Choice
- I see a lot of folks suggesting plywood. Which is fine. It's strong. Not sure why plain boards aren't just fine as well. I suppose plywood can be stronger. Either way, you can probably get whatever color you want using good quality stain. If you use a high quality board or plywood it should take the stain nicely - assuming you've sanded and prepped properly - and come out really beautiful. If you want it dark / black, that should be quite possible. Then throw some polyurethane silk on top of that and all set.
* Cutting:
- Once I started getting better and proved to wife I was going to stick with doing this stuff, I got a nice table saw. Before that, I'd have large stuff rough cut at the big box store. Then, at home I'd two other Kreg products, square cut and rip cut, to cut further. The rip cut attaches to your circular saw and lets you rip larger boards. It's a little bit of a PITA to attach and detach, but not too bad. And it's pretty accurate if you're careful.
Post pics when your done!
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